Lifelog

A list of good reasons to not compare with other indie hackers on Twitter or any social media platform:

### Highlights reels vs reality
I'm comparing their highlight reels with my B-roll reality, their wins with my fails. Everyone airbrushes their projected image on social, so it's not a realistic apple to apple comparison anyway.

### Different stages of progress
I'm comparing people at different stages in their career. You'll never compare the wins or losses of a senior C-suite executive with a junior manager in his first job since college, so why should we compare that way between 2 entrepreneurs? Their 10 year journey to get to that point is not comparable to my 2 year milestone.

### Different starting lines
Unless they went to the same school, had similar upbringing, and same socio-economic environment growing up—basically your biological twin— there's not much basis for comparison. It's not a level playing field, never was, never will be. Someone from a rich family, rich country, great business environment, will always have an unfair edge. Our starting lines are all different.

### Different finishing lines
Everyone has different goals, even if they are direct, near-identical competitors. We start at a different starting lines, and we have a different finishing lines. Entrepreneurship isn't a race where everyone is running on the same track. Hell, we all aren't even in the same race, even for direct competitors! If my goal is about freedom, does it make sense to compare with someone who's goal is to make money? If I had only $5k monthly revenue but I achieved my goal of freedom, am I lesser off than someone with $100k monthly revenue but not yet achieved his goal of $1M?

### Different market conditions
Market conditions, supply and demand, larger economic forces beyond your control, all determine how well your product does. If your product is in a different market from someone else, even if both are indies, there's probably way more factors outside both of your control than we would like to admit. Uncertainty makes the grounds for comparison shaky.

### Different life situations
Everyone's life situation is different. I'm comparing my results from having to care for a toddler kid, being sleep deprived, and having many mouths to feed versus a single guy, no family responsibilities, way lesser time constraints. I'm starting the entrepreneur game in hard mode already, while the rest are in easy mode.

### Big life things vs little tactical things
Comparing the big things simply does nothing productive, and does no good for my mental wellbeing. So why do it? Caveat: Compare the little, tactical things though – like compare how someone markets their product with mine, so that I can learn. If it's strictly learning purposes with no emotions involved, it's okay.

*Any other good reasons we shouldn't compare with others?*

Why bring it back? Because:

"Short-form content to get the Attention
Long-form content to keep the Attention"
- @AlexLlullTW (https://twitter.com/AlexLlullTW/status/1589264849858691072)

Some hits and misses but the results look awesome nonetheless! Don't think I'll ever design my own app icon ever again 🤯

https://www.amazon.sg/dp/B0BLG1F5MW/ref=cbw_us_sg_dp_ags?smid=ARPIJN329XQ0D

OK I’m done with the old approach of working on weaknesses in order to improve and grow.

Maybe it’s just age. Maybe it’s experience.

I don’t know for sure, but I’m getting a nagging doubt that my old ways aren’t working, yet I’m still expecting results (because “show up every day”). That’s Einstein’s definition of insanity.

No more.

I’ve been beholden to that paradigm, because it had worked so well for me in the past. In sports especially. I learned that—as an athlete—you are only as strong as your weakest link. Because performance is a consequence of different attributes coming together – power, endurance, mental qualities. They are all chain-linked and pulling in the same direction like a chain when you’re performing. And where it breaks is always at the weakest link in the chain. People intuitively avoid working on their deficit areas because it feels bad. If someone is has good endurance, they keep using and working on it because it makes them feel good. In sports I’ve gained lots of improvement by working hard on those weak links. That’s how I’ve approached work and career. Focus on deficits, the strengths will take care of themselves.

But I realised this might not be true for indie hacking.

Because in sports there’s rules of the game, and the factors that lead to success are relatively straightforward and predictable. Anyone with the most power, endurance, technical skills and mental prowess wins.

But there’s no such straightforward formula for success in entrepreneurship.

In fact, for every best practice, you can find someone who succeeded without it. Every business 101 fundamental, you can find a business built without it.

You need to go to college, have an MBA. No – college dropouts are now billionaires.
You need lots of venture capital to succeed. No – bootstrapped startups are winning too.
You need an audience. No – ads, SEO, network effects can bring you to profitability too.

In a complex, unpredictable and diversified space like entrepreneurship, there is no weak links. Because there are no rules. No assured attributes that predict winning like in sports. Success is mostly opportunistic and random. Luck plays a major role even though most do not like to admit it.

So there’s opportunity for everyone to win, because the market accepts so much diversity. Just playing to your strengths is sufficient.

Hate money? Don’t bother with unlearn money mindsets. Just do business for my own reasons which I love.

Hate marketing? Then stop doing it. Don’t tweet 3x a day, write 1 thread a week, and all that nonsense. Just be fiercely authentic and genuine, help others, share whatever I feel I want to share and talk about.

Hate all the noise? Don’t worry about best practices and just do what I intuit to be working for me and my business.

Hate the fear of judgement? Don’t worry about how others opine of me. Let them accept me as I come.

I’m so past working on my deficits.

I’m just going to leverage on my strengths and assets, and go.

Strengths > deficits

Biohacking is often very physical or tech-related, but for biohacking stress, I think there's lots of mindset and mental tricks that help. Stoicism is making a comeback recently and the Stoic's practical and inner ways to handle stress that [@dailystoic](https://www.instagram.com/reel/CkoxFiYA4qn/?igshid=MDJmNzVkMjY=) talked about seems to be pretty spot on and relevant for stress management:

1. Focus on what you can control. Most of the thing that stress us out has nothing to do with what we can influence.
2. Prepare for it in advanced - not just do positive visualisation, do negative visualisation. "The blow you can anticipate lands the least heavy." - Seneca
3. Journaling - Write in morning what you're stressed about, and in evening, review how the day went, what you did. Did I really need to be so worried. Did my worry make anything better?
4. Have a hobby, different from work, from kids. Put some of that stress energy to good use.
5. Laugh at life, don't cry about it. Life is absurd rather than terrible.
6. Memento mori - almost nothing is worth worrying about in light of your fragile mortality.

I'm definitely guilty of overthinking things I can't control to the point it is more amplified than it seems. Always asking if it's something outside of my sphere of influence will be helpful in not letting stress run crazy. I just saw a [useful visual](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6995154047271936000) on what I can control and what I can't:

In my control:
- My boundaries
- My thoughts and actions
- The goals I set
- What I give my energy to
- How I speak to myself
- How I handle challenges

Out of my control:
- The past
- The future
- The actions of others
- The opinions of others
- What happens around me
- What other people think of me
- How others take care of themselves

Having more-than-enough advanced preparation for me definitely helps. For my consulting gigs, I often arrive 1h earlier to settle into the space and be ready. Preparation is also about setting the right expectations and mindset going in. As I've realised recently, [expectations can help, or hinder](https://golifelog.com/posts/expectations-1667690041647) – good to calibrate from the onset.

Writing here is my journaling in a way. But Maybe I should consider something analog and offline, where I can write 100% without inhibition.

I've failed at finding hobbies multiple times. So much that I gave up on hobbies. Maybe the word "hobby" is hindering. Maybe what I need is simply to do something different. Switch up the form. Sit at the desk too much. Go do some work with my hands. Tasks are too intellectual and cognitive? Do something wildly creative for a change – paint, draw, create. Too much solo work? Go work in teams for a short while.

I'm definitely too serious when it comes to life. Laughing at life would help. Having a sense of humour about failures and difficulties, making light of things, having a laugh at myself – all great ways to uncoil that stress spring building up tension within. My shitpost tweets are often attempts at this. Maybe that's why they work so well!

Lastly, memeto mori gives the overview effect on the planet that's our life. Just take a step back and a deep breath, and know that a year from now you might not even remember what you're stressed about today.

Stress biohacking, the Stoic way.

Expectations is spice. It makes things taste better. But used on the wrong thing, it makes things worse.

Expectations get me to my goals faster. If I expect my product to improve 1% every day, I expect that my daily effort will bring me there. If I expect that hard work will eventually get me to my goals, then I will work hard. Cause and effect, and the expectations of that cause and effect.

It works when expectation is aligned to reality. Only when aligned with reality.

But that isn’t always true, and when it’s out of whack, expectations hold you back than push you forward.

If there’s no product-market fit, working hard is working hard on the wrong thing, going in the wrong direction. Expectations that hard work will pay off won’t change the reality that you’re moving in the wrong direction, and will never hit your goals. No amount of reality distortion will change that. The sun will never rise from the west, no matter how much I believe it.

When I expect something to be my main project that will liberate me from 9-5, my expectations would be to keep hammering at it, keep trying to grow it till it does. It’s the Chosen One. I will reach my goal if I had faith and keep going. But it was on the wrong path from the start. No amount of growth hacks, promoting and selling will change that reality. No amount of faith will ever get you there.

So right matching of expectation to product or goal, is mission-critical. Basically, being realistic, and having good judgement to not let what I think I want cloud what’s really happening.

Lifelog suffered that. For too long I’ve expected it to grow just because I expect it to. Because it’s my first ever SaaS, my main project, my Chosen One. So I kept going. I’m pretty stubborn with keeping at things until it hits my goal. But I was so wrong this time. I was blind to the reality and the data I was shown. That it won’t grow till some big changes are made. More features to be built. Less expectations to be had. Little presumptions for MRR growth. Perhaps after that it will stand a chance.

So, no more expectations. It’s holding me and Lifelog back.

I’ll get back to before I had expectations, and just see the product as it is, as what it does, right now.

Just watch and see.

Gold nugget from James Clear’s recent newsletter:

“In some areas of life, value is unlocked by starting. Even a five-minute workout or a short walk can reset your mood and benefit your body. In other areas, value is unlocked by finishing. It does you no good to build a bridge halfway across the river. You need to complete the project to realize the value. Do you need to start or finish? Are you building a body or building a bridge?”

He’s probably talking about writing and creative projects, but I see so much overlap with indie hacking, making products, starting small bets.

When you’re still a noob and not launched anything substantial yet, it makes sense that starting has more value than finishing. Because beginners worry too much about the finished product too much. What if it’s not perfect? What if people laugh at my mistakes and bugs? Value is unlocked when you start. When you ship. When you launch.

The same thing for earning your first $1 from the internet. You can launch products all year but if your goal is freedom from 9-5, then you got to launch a paid product. Starting with that first $1 has immense value in opening up your mind and expanding the horizon on what’s possible.

Once you launch enough and are making some small revenue from your small bets, finishing starts to have more value. Launching is easy. Sustaining for the long game is finishing. Finishing as in truly finishing and hitting your goal. Usually that involves doing the tasks that you hate in order to get to a goal of say, ramen profitability. Learning marketing even though you’d rather code more features. Rethinking ads even though you don’t have a good impression of ads. It does me no good to keep building new things but not seeing them through to full potential. You realize the true value (of financial freedom) only when you finish.

And it’s not homogenous at each stage of progress, as a noob or a veteran. Even as a veteran, there will be tasks or sub-goals—like new work areas/opportunities—where you’ll benefit from starting than finishing. It’s more of what’s more predominant in your overall trajectory.

The trick is to not hold on to either stance too strongly, and be objective.

So do you need to start, or finish?

Plugins For Carrd(https://plugins.carrd.co) launched in Dec 2020 as a side project. It started for fun. I was learning to code, learning Vue.js, and made tiny standalone apps that I realised could be embedded in Carrd as a feature.

So I went and created templates for it even before the Seller Program existed. I only had free templates at the start, but seeing the reception to the free ones, I then launched my first paid plugin in March 2021. The revenue is one-off, but modest in the first year (2021):

Dec $135
Nov $334
Oct $60
Sep $105
Aug $150
Jul $120
Jun $30
May $30
Apr $105
Mar $30
Feb $0
Jan $0
———————
TOTAL = $1099
Monthly average = $91.60

What's surprising about the revenue was how little I did to market it. I shared bits and pieces on social media, answered some questions, that's about it. It just kept growing *all on its own*. And now, in the 2nd year, revenue DOUBLED:

2022 revenue (as of today):

Oct $250
Sep $200
Aug $230
Jul $265
Jun $285
May $345
Apr $125
Mar $250
Feb $90
Jan $210
———————
TOTAL = $2250
Monthly average = $187.5

And that's just the numbers for plugin sales. It's not including the $1514 in cumulative revenue I earned so far in affiliate revenue (from the Referral Program) and templates 'donations' (from the Seller Program) in – just last month in October alone, the affiliate + template revenue was already $259. If this keeps up, it could potentially mean another doubled revenue stream!

All the while my other products either stagnated (Lifelog, Outsprint) or faded to zero (Keto List Singapore, Sweet Jam Sites). Outsprint only recently reviving again due to better pandemic conditions.

Except February, every month out-earned Lifelog. This is why I'm pushing Lifelog to side project status and Plugins to main project. This is even more poignant when I compare just how much marketing I did for Lifelog compared to Plugins. Not bad for what was once a side project huh...

It's crazy how long I've sat on this opportunity and didn't double down on it as much as the potential shows. Yet the Universe had been truly patient. So lately I've been trying to do more of what seems to be working:

- answering questions from new customers within a day or less
- helping people with their Carrd problems, answering questions without expecting returns
- creating more free templates and plugins and sharing
- promote without coming across as self-promoting, by adding "~ plugins.carrd.co" to my username, and signing off as "Jason ~ plugins.carrd.co" in comments

Just old school good service. Just being giving to a fault.

No growth hacks. No fancy tricks.

I'm not even talking about it that much on Twitter. Maybe that's the key......

Saw this on my Twitter feed:

“The biggest success of my entire life was the fact that I managed to stay entirely unemployed.” — Emil Cioran via @viziandrei

I love how his success is defined by NOT being something instead of being something.

I mean, most of us set goals the latter way, isn’t it?

I want to be rich.
I want to be healthy.
I want to be happy.

Always phrase it in a positive way, they say, because by telling your brain to not think of a pink elephant you end up thinking of it. And you don’t want the negative outcome by framing your goal in a negative way. But somehow that always felt like an overly simplistic take of the brain to me. Surely there’s a difference between mere mental visualisation versus planning, thinking and acting on something more complex like goals. Surely we can tell the difference, and act accordingly.

And to be honest, I don’t need the positive framing of the goals either.

I don’t need to be rich. I just want to stay out of having a job.
I don’t need to be healthy. I just want to be free from chronic ailments.
I don’t need to be happy. I just don’t want to be bored with life.

So perhaps I can define my own success as NOT being something instead of being something.

Who cares if everyone does it differently…

Here’s the longer version of the Emil Cioran quote for those who are curious:

“I lived exactly the life that I wanted… free, without the constraints of a profession
without petty worries. A dream life, a life brimming with leisure, something unheard of in our times.

I read a lot; I read voraciously, but only what I liked, and when I attempted to write a few books, my work got rewarded because I never ignored my genuine interests and tastes.

The biggest success of my entire life was the fact that I managed to stay entirely
unemployed.

I designed my life quite well. I pretended that it was a failure; but it wasn’t.”

So I decided to [start afresh from zero](https://golifelog.com/posts/november-goals-1667257253907) for my products.

So let's do a honest "Hot Or Not" review of my products:

Outsprint Design - 🔥 Hot
- I mistakenly looked down on it in the past, because I wanted to transit out of consulting to fulltime indie. But had since come round to it, and owning it now.
- It's totally running on its own momentum now, and I'm getting new opportunities every other week (sometimes from completely cold, unexpected sources).
- It's the only thing keeping my family alive - just finished a $30k project, got another $7.6k one coming.

Plugins For Carrd - 🔥 Hot
- A project that started as a side project but really should be the main one.
- Right from get-go, it kind of marketed itself (still don't know how that worked!).
- From making a few fun dollars from digital downloads to it's now making more money per month than my SaaS products. Suffice to say, I'm doubling down on this next.

Lifelog - 🌶 Spicy
- This was my main project but sadly product-market fit wasn't forthcoming.
- I realised this should really be my hobby project, because it continues to have a special place in my heart in the same way a hobby does. I love to write and continue to write daily, and I enjoy hanging out with the community here.
- So while it's seemingly 'downgraded' to side project status, I still want to keep working on it.

5am creators - 🌶 Spicy
- A non revenue-generating project, done just for fun and learning.
- Sleep continues to be of major interest and relevance in my life, so I'm still into it.
- But I no longer market it as I prefer a tighter knit, self elected group.
- It does have some potential though to become a paid thing, even though I have no idea what it might look like.
- Some future ideas - ebook/email course on sleep biohacking, paid membership, Telegram bot to track sleep streaks

Sheet2Bio - ❄️ Not
- Started with a bang, getting lots of likes and support on Twitter, but it was totally a nice-to-have vitamin, not a painkiller.
- Sales was just 1 LTD. No product-market fit.
- Still want to make it a more proper SaaS, build out the home page and onboarding etc, but no grand ambitions for it.
- Might have to try freemium model.

Keto List Singapore - ❄️ Not
- This started with solving a specific need for my diet, but soon lapsed into lack of updates.
- It's still a unique product within the keto scene in Singapore, but my motivation to continue building it is low, as my diet had evolved.

Sweet Jam Sites - ❄️ Not
- Did a few web design projects. Earned maybe $1k cumulatively.
- But the Stackbit platform that I enjoyed building on changed drastically, and it's less fun to build on now.
- Lost interest after a while.

It's obviously which products I should be doubling down on, which ones are hobbies, and which ones are on the decline.

*Act accordingly.*

My intentions for November is simple:

- Finish well for my consulting gigs
- Start from zero for my products

I'm super grateful for the extended runway from my consulting, so it's a matter of continuing that practice of gratitude in action, as I had been doing the past 2 months already. One gig ends this week while another smallish one starts next week. I should be all done before November ends. I really want to do a good job and end well.

The great thing about doing a portfolio of products and services is that it allows me to walk away (briefly) from one or a few projects while I focus on another. The past 2 months of consulting had been a break from my indie products, so to speak. It gave me fresh perspective. That's where starting from zero comes into play...

Starting from zero for my products sounds simple, but probably harder than it seems. I don't know what that truly means in practice, but in theory, I find myself wanting to start on a clean slate. Without any preconceived or blindly inherited notions of right or wrong, should or must. Not following ideas and ideals of success or failure, but just really seeing my projects for what they are, as objectively as possible. To not hold on to it out of false gods, or as Daniel Vassallo likes to say:

> Treat your projects like cattle not pets.

Easier said than done, but I would like to try.

That's not to say I will shut down projects that aren't doing well or earning revenue. I'll likely just keep them around, just not commit any effort or bandwidth to them. And focus on the bets that have shown potential through real data.

Onwards!

📈 Current MRR (all from Lifelog): $119 (→$0)
📊 One-off revenue: $261 (↓$90)
💰 Total revenue: $380 (↓$90)
🏦 Total profit: $323.6 (↓$106.40) (excl. salary and consulting costs)

👀 Tweet impressions: 232k vs 240k
💙 Likes: 2.6k vs 2.1k
💬 Engagement rate: 3.9% vs 3.9%
🏡 Profile visits: 32.7k vs 36.6k
📣 Mentions: 1088 vs 996
👣 New followers: 280 vs 211
📧 Email subscribers: 40 (↑4)

Looking back at my intentions for October:

Practising gratitude by doing well for my consulting gig
Aligning to my values and own authentic self
Doing some groundwork for building in Nov/Dec
I think I managed to practice all three. The gig is completing, and I expect to wind down for the year by mid Nov. Yet because I’ve stopped building for two months, I’m eager to jump back to coding my products then. Hope to have some active rest, and just work at my own place then.

Alignment continues to feel good. Every time I make a tiny tweak to my profile on Twitter, Makerlog or some other social platform, I feel better about it. I’m incrementally piecing the puzzle that’s my authentic online self.

My early thoughts for the building phase to come: It’ll be about doing my own thing, following my own instincts. And dropping a lot more of the current indie hacker practices I’m doing but no longer interests or serve me. Considering dropping revenue progress charts and updates, for example. It’s already shifting that way since this month.

Overall, October felt like the start of a 180º shift in my indie solopreneur approach… in time for the new year to come.

Got to admit: This is an easy trap to fall into.

Stressing over stress is the best (and stupidest) way to amplify stress, not reduce it.

Because when it comes to biohacking and improvement of any kind, it’s so easy to stay in a deficit mindset. To keep finding things to fix about yourself. To keep telling myself I need fixing.

That’s just another way to flagellate myself on a daily basis, that I’m broken.

More self-beating.
More anxiety.
More frustration.
More stress.

That can’t be a good thing.

Inferring from that, I’m struck by a new thought:

I’ve always done worked hard at biohacking and improving myself from a place of lack. I’ve never once experienced self improvement from a place of abundance and sufficiency. From self love and acceptance.

It feels almost logically impossible, doesn’t it?

Can one accept oneself yet still feel there are area where one can grow in? Wouldn’t self acceptance also accept all the flaws and gaps, and lead to a kind of laziness around self growth?

I’m not sure. I certainly wish it’s possible, but I’ve never seen it, felt it, touched it before.

How do I destress without stressing?
How do I grow from a place of abundance and acceptance?

Answers welcomed.

When doors to opportunities close in your face, it sucks. It’s weird but sometimes the Universe was actually trying to protect you with the closed door.

Like how a few months back I had a meeting with a potential client, and the chat ended off well. It felt optimistic. I liked the problem they were trying to solve. A consultancy gig was in the books. Or so it seemed. Weeks on, the lead went cold. No news. What a shame, I thought.

But recently I had the chance to learn more about the client and their project. There were so many red flags! Now I know why that door was closed.

I was being protected. Somehow.

It reminded me of this parable of a Chinese farmer:

A farmer and his son had a beloved horse who helped the family earn a living. One day, the horse ran away and their neighbours exclaimed, “Your horse ran away, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”

A few days later, the horse returned home, leading a few wild horses back to the farm as well. The neighbours shouted out, “Your horse has returned, and brought several horses home with him. What great luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”

Later that week, the farmer’s son was trying to break one of the horses and she threw him to the ground, breaking his leg. The neighbours cried, “Your son broke his leg, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.”

A few weeks later, soldiers from the national army marched through town, recruiting all boys for the army. They did not take the farmer’s son, because he had a broken leg. The neighbours shouted, “Your boy is spared, what tremendous luck!” To which the farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”

Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.

It’s crazy how our notions of good or bad events happening to us are so tunnel-visioned on our immediate context. The moment the context switches, what’s good or bad switches too.

Truly, it’s impossible to know the good or bad, objectively.

An open door is good fortune, but can turn into misfortune. A close door counts as bad luck, but ended up as good luck. If the Universe didn’t offer a peek behind the curtains for this one occasion, I would have never known the bad had flipped to the good.

Makes me think a lot about my recent bad luck and misfortunes.
Made me think even more about some of the recent good opportunities that came along.

Maybe it’s bad.
Maybe it’s good.
Maybe not. We’ll see.

If there's ever a playbook for the portfolio of small bets approach, this is probably it:

> What to unlearn/relearn
>
> \- Hard work → Trial & error
> \- Focus → Many things at once
> \- Optimization → 80/20 rule
> \- Consistency → Intensity
> \- Avoid distractions → Embrace randomness
> \- Practice 10,000 hrs → 100 bets
> \- Goals → Stay in the game
> \- Efficiency → Slack in the system
>
> – [@dvassallo](https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1585320516378058752)

I'm a fan of Daniel's ideas around small bets. It resonated with me, and articulated something I had always intuited and had been doing even before it came along. But what's interesting about this list of things to unlearn/relearn is how spot on it is on all the things I'm struggling with on my indie solopreneur journey.

For the longest time, especially in school and when employed, I'm totally about the qualities on the left side of the list: hard work, focus, optimization, consistency, avoid distractions, 10k hours, setting goals, efficiency. Maybe I wasn't like that when I'm a kid, but it had certainly been beaten into me over the decades. Our society in general incentivizes these qualities. You're a good boy or girl if you do all of that.

That's why it's been a steep uphill climb unlearning all that early conditioning. Maybe that's why I feel stuck.

If I were to give myself kindergarten grades for how well I'm doing transiting over:

- ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Hard work → Trial & error
- ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Focus → Many things at once
- ⭐️⭐️ Optimization → 80/20 rule
- ⭐️ Consistency → Intensity
- ⭐️⭐️ Avoid distractions → Embrace randomness
- ⭐️⭐️ Practice 10,000 hrs → 100 bets
- ⭐️ Goals → Stay in the game
- ⭐️ Efficiency → Slack in the system

I'm still pretty much a consistency person. I get that I can still keep my daily habits and still practice intensity for my products, but it's been hard separating what is a hardwired personality trait.

I loved goal setting. It used to work very well for everything I do in the past. So practising to let go of it had been hard. I used to do monthly goals but now it's more monthly intentions, which work for me.

Giving myself slack in the system was the hardest. I would optimize and utilize every waking minute to work or do something. Taking a break intentionally was counter-reflex. That's also why I burned out multiple times over the past decade.

I reminded myself that I should bring a [skeptic's lens](https://golifelog.com/posts/a-skeptics-lens-1666737100854) to this, that I need to make this mine instead of blindly following someone else's playbook. So still lots to experiment and discern. I suspect as I go, it's not a total transition from left to right on the list, but more of a nuanced intuition on when and where I stand depending on the context.

After all, I've been doing this even before the playbook came along. I want to circle back to that beginner's mind, even as I learn more.

Onwards!

Notably, added "We write for the long game."

"A community for creators to develop a daily writing habit. Just 100 words a day. We write for the long game. Made by @jasonleowsg"

More and more I'm seeing this recurring pattern, not just for myself but for others:

The products that I least expect to succeed are the ones that actually do. Often they are happy accidents.

Big lessons in there:

- By definition, you can't plan for happy accidents. Once you expect an accident it ceases to be one. Only thing I can do is to experiment a lot and launch small bets, all the while having low to zero expectations.
- Expectations more often than not, get in my way. Setting goals may be common wisdom. But with goals you get expectations. With expectations comes the associated stress, anxieties, frustrations when thing don't turn out your way. With goals and the expectations of hitting it, you start to narrow down your world into things that you *assume* are helpful for your goals and things that are not, thereby missing out on real opportunities that emerge from you putting stuff out into the world. These opportunities can get you to financial freedom but just because it seems unrelated to your goals, you are blind to them.
- There are so many great inventions that came about because of chance accidents. Penicillin, for example. A more recent and relatable one – Post-It notes. And often the inventors weren't even looking to invent that. They were often by-products of the main thing they were trying to invent. The sawdust from the woodwork ended up being more valuable than the woodwork itself. Selling your sawdust is underrated. I often look to the final output and outcome of any creative process as the product, but perhaps I should look more at the through-puts, process outputs and by-products as the product!
- Have fun staying curious. Happy accidents won't happen if I'm not curious and having fun doing that. I remember I had so much fun creating mini apps as a way to learn coding, and that ended up being plugins for Carrd.

Tl;dr - more happy accidents, less serious plans.

Learned this the hard way recently:

"When you choose who to follow on Twitter, you are choosing your future thoughts." [– @JamesClear](https://twitter.com/JamesClear/status/1312386219599433729)

For me it's more about who I engage with daily on twitter. I follow to make friends, but I don't use the home feed so I often don't see the tweets of those I follow. I only see those whom I switched on notifications for, and those on my daily-weekly engagement list.

And indeed, reading their tweets daily have an influence on how I feel and think too. As much as I like to say I'm sovereign and a discerning individual, I'm a lot less than I like to think I am. We're the effect of the 5 closest friends we spend time with. That's the 5 chimps theory. And it's not far from truth.

Granted, I've been curating my engagement feed with inspiring, hard-working, humble and awesome folks. People who I can learn a lot from. Folks I love to learn from.

Yet not everything I learn from them is applicable to me. In fact, just applying it wholesale to my context can hurt more than help.

There's something missing in all this.

A filter.

I don't feel like I'm filtering enough. I'm not sufficiently discerning. I definitely should think through more, experiment more and test new ideas I get from everyone more, before allowing it to live rent-free in my head.

Now *that* feels like it's hard to do.

It feels like it requires a lot more mindful consumption, a lot more effort expended at the point of reading. But does it?

Lately out of frustration I've been feeling a bit jaded and brought a skeptical lens to everything I'm reading. Granted, it's not the most wholesome feeling to have. But that experience got me thinking – perhaps that's all it takes. Just add a skeptic's lens to the reading.

A lens where everything is guilty of being wrong ***for me*** until proven right, through direct experience or rigorous research.

The "for me" part is critical, for it allows me to accept that something can be true for someone but not for me. Prevents unreasonable skepticism and negativity from creeping in.

OK so this is it.

Let's try this skeptic's lens for a few weeks and see what happens...

Learned this the hard way recently:

"When you choose who to follow on Twitter, you are choosing your future thoughts." [– @JamesClear](https://twitter.com/JamesClear/status/1312386219599433729)

For me it's more about who I engage with daily on twitter. I follow to make friends, but I don't use the home feed so I often don't see the tweets of those I follow. I only see those whom I switched on notifications for, and those on my daily-weekly engagement list.

And indeed, reading their tweets daily have an influence on how I feel and think too. As much as I like to say I'm sovereign and a discerning individual, I'm a lot less than I like to think I am. We're the effect of the 5 closest friends we spend time with. That's the 5 chimps theory. And it's not far from truth.

Granted, I've been curating my engagement feed with inspiring, hard-working, humble and awesome folks. People who I can learn a lot from. Folks I love to learn from.

Yet not everything I learn from them is applicable to me. In fact, just applying it wholesale to my context can hurt more than help.

There's something missing in all this.

A filter.

I don't feel like I'm filtering enough. I'm not sufficiently discerning. I definitely should think through more, experiment more and test new ideas I get from everyone more, before allowing it to live rent-free in my head.

Now *that* feels like it's hard to do.

It feels like it requires a lot more mindful consumption, a lot more effort expended at the point of reading. But does it?

Lately out of frustration I've been feeling a bit jaded and brought a skeptical lens to everything I'm reading. Granted, it's not the most wholesome feeling to have. But that experience got me thinking – perhaps that's all it takes. Just add a skeptic's lens to the reading.

A lens where everything is guilty of being wrong ***for me*** until proven right, through direct experience or rigorous research.

The "for me" part is critical, for it allows me to accept that something can be true for someone but not for me. Prevents unreasonable skepticism and negativity from creeping in.

OK so this is it.

Let's try this skeptic's lens for a few weeks and see what happens...

When I go too long without creating something—anything—I feel like I’m shrivelling up like a fish out of water. The metaphor is spot on, because being creative to me often feels like a fish swimming in the life-giving sea. Only in the water can the fish breathe, survive and be in its true element. Out of the water for too long, it jumps around seeking water, till it eventually dies.

And that’s how I feel after a few months of consulting and not much creating and building.

I mean, I’m grateful for the consulting. I truly am. It’s the only thing that’s putting food on the table – something I’m painfully aware of. I wrote about the gratitude I feel to be able to still do it. I went all out to do a good job, and I achieved that. But after months of not building my indie products, I’m feeling like that metaphorical fish.

Every year it’s the same seasons and same emotional journeys. I recall feeling the same way last year. Over the years I start to recognise it, and become comfortable with the changes.

It’s just the natural seasons of the soul. Nothing wrong, nothing to fix.

But it does mean I’m feeling ready to get back to creating and building again. That thirst is back.

Creative thirst.

And in a way it’s good to cultivate this creative thirst every now and then by switching over to something else. Because sometimes working on my indie projects can feel like an old tired relationship. Like an unhappy marriage that went on too long without love and spark. You need that occasional distance to get some perspective, and “make the heart fonder”.

And the heart sure is fonder now. I can’t wait to finally get back to working on Lifelog, on my Carrd plugins, on all the other ideas I have.

Soon. November.

I've been thinking about my [new goal for biohacking stress](https://golifelog.com/posts/new-goal-biohacking-stress-1666479705423).

Sure there's lots of hacks I can use and do, but as I learn from my sleep and diet biohacking, often the simplest and most basic ones are the most effective.

For sleep, it's simply sleeping more.
For diet, it's eating whole single ingredient foods.

How about stress? I think it's REST.

So simple and basic, but so hard for the workaholic me. It's like my Achilles heel. I like working and enjoy my work. Plus the stress of survival and feeding the family, it's a sure formula for cyclical burnout and chronic stress. Which was what really happened.

I struggle to rest, that's why I'm so stressed.

So just setting boundaries, putting time aside to rest, might already help a lot.

Ok blocking weekends, off days and alone time is important. I do that now. I don't work or check social media on weekends. I intentionally took a week off after my consultancy project to rest.

It's also about the different types of rest. The [7 types of rest](https://ideas.ted.com/the-7-types-of-rest-that-every-person-needs/):

- Physical rest - passive rest like sleeping, napping, active rest like yoga, stretching
- Mental rest - short breaks, long breaks, vacations
- Sensory rest - bright lights, screens, conversations
- Creative rest - walks in nature, being in the forest or sea, enjoying the arts,
- Emotional rest - express feelings, say no
- Social rest - toxic relationships or interactions
- Spiritual rest - connecting to something bigger than oneself, through prayer, meditation

Lots to do and experiment with.

Onwards!